CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Jimbo Fisher sat on a lighted stage at the 2026 ACC Football Kickoff at the Hilton Uptown with a secret to share.

Fisher, who led Florida State to victory in the final BCS National Championship Game in 2014 and coached Texas A&M from 2018-2023, is a closet Georgia football fan.

“No doubt,” Fisher told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday during a break in his ACC Network television duties. “It’s because I root for Josh Brooks in everything he does.”

It’s an odd rationale until one learns that Brooks, the Bulldogs’ sixth-year athletic director, once studied at the feet of Fisher at LSU while serving as an equipment manager and student assistant.

Fisher was the Tigers’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under Nick Saban (2000-04) and Les Miles (2005-06), overlapping with Brooks’ undergraduate years (1998-2002).

“When Nick Saban and Jimbo showed up, it only took a week for me to realize how different things were going to be,” Brooks told the AJC. “Reflecting back, that time in my life gave me confidence later to recognize and know the difference in coaches, and it created a standard.”

Fisher said he remembers how Brooks, even in his youth, was a model of consistency and focus.

“Josh said then he wanted to be a coach, and he sat in every meeting I had — he’d get all his other stuff done before the meeting and have the field ready for us — but he’d come in with a notebook and take notes on everything, and he never missed a meeting.”

Brooks’ career path went the administrative route when he took a job as the director of football operations at Louisiana-Monroe in 2004, where he stayed until Mark Richt hired him at UGA as assistant director of football operations.

Fisher made a run to hire Brooks at Florida State, but former Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity did what was needed to keep Brooks in the UGA administrative fold.

Fisher, back then, knew what he was looking at in Brooks.

“Josh Brooks is one of the keys to Georgia,” Fisher said. “Kirby Smart does a great job, but Josh is a huge part of that. I’m going to tell you why: He came from the ground up.

“When you’re an athletic director, you’re touching all bases, and that’s why he has such a broad picture and very keen view of things,” he said. “There’s not a better guy and better AD in college football right now than Josh Brooks.”

As for the football coaching ambition, Fisher has no doubt the current Georgia athletic director could have been successful in that venture, too.

“He knew the Xs and Os and could have been a coach in a heartbeat, and he was going to be, but there were some (administrative) opportunities out there, too,” Fisher said. “I told him he’d be good there, too, and so he looked into it; we were very close in that way.”

Brooks credits Fisher with important lessons learned in identifying and evaluating successful coaches.

“I learned coaches can be demanding and tough, and hold you accountable, but treat you well at the same time,” Brooks said. “It was a good balance of learning how to get chewed out, but then (Fisher) would give you that wink when you needed it.

“Don’t let his West Virginia accent fool you; anyone who has worked with Jimbo knows the man is a genius when it comes to offensive game plans,” said Brooks, who spent time in the coaching box at LSU when Fisher was play-calling.

“People underestimate the intricacies of football and the chess match that it is, and (Fisher) was playing chess when a lot of people were playing checkers.”